"DISK BOOT FAILURE" (saving the hard drive)

[chess1]

I really need some serious help here. First off it's my mom's old desktop computer. Everytime it's turned on and booted the screen says "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". It's a 2005 Compaq Presario SR1650NX. This is its online website from Compaq.

Compaq Presario SR1650NX

This is its basic system specs:

CPU:Athlon 64 3500 939 socket
Motherboard: ASUS A8AE-LE
Memory: 1GB(2 x 512 184 pin), DDR SDRAM
Hard Drive: 250 GB SATA
OS: MS Windows XP Media Center
PSU: generic PSU

Nothing really has been changed or added except I removed the 56K modem PCI card when my parents had DSL a long time ago. I check this forum's archived messages via its search engine using keywords "DISK BOOT FAILURE" and other computer tech forums similar to TechIMO.com and I couldn't find a concise answers. So I'm going to take the old desktop rig to an A+ certified computer technician at places like Microcenter, Tigerdirect/CompUSA, or Office Depot to see if they have a solution. My basic question is if it is possible to take out the old rig's internal hard drive and put it in an external enclosure and turn it into an external hard drive? That way I can save the data in the hard drive and transfer it to another new external hard drive. Or is the hard drive completely gone to the circuit dustbin forever? Also will a good namebrand PSU on this list save the entire rig? I'm not sure of the name brand of the hard drive but it's probably a 3.5 inch SATA 3Gb/s hard drive and the PSU is a generic PSU from Compaq. I'm thinking about replacing both the internal hard drive and PSU with a new Windows XP OS (I don't think it can handle Windows 7) so my mom can still use the old computer. But I want to save the old hard drive's data. Thanks ahead for any answers I receive.

[osprey4]

Hi Chess1,

Welcome to TechIMO.

Disk boot failure means one of two things. Either the hard drive has failed, or the boot sector of the drive has become corrupt for whatever reason. If the former, then you need to replace the drive and you will not be able to retrieve the data. If the latter, it might be possible to salvage both.

However, you can't tell which problem is yours without testing the drive. So make yourself a bootable floppy or CD with a hard drive diagnostic program on it to test the drive.

Finally, it is unlikely that replacing the power supply will do this system any good whatsoever.

[RicheemxX]

Before you take it anywhere do some basic troubleshooting. "Disk boot failure" generally means there is no OS found. This can be caused by a few different things. Either the drive isn't working (unplugged, dead ect), the OS has been corrupted and can't be found or you might be booting to the wrong drive. Basically your PC is looking for an OS on either the CD/DVD drive or somewhere else.

If you can check the bios to make sure the drive is still being shown, if not then you might want to check to make sure when you were removing parts you didn't accidentally unplug the drive, or knock a cable loose.

If the drive does show in the bios then you have two options
a) you can d/l the drive tools from the manuf and check to see that the drive is actually working correctly. If it is then it means your OS somehow got fried
b) If you have another computer (presumably you do) or external case, you can add the drive as a secondary and check to see if the drive is working. If it is then you can check for your files, back them up and then you'll probably need to re-install windows.

If neither option work, then you may want to take it to a tech, but if neither computer shows the drive then it means the drive went bad and is probably dead. In that case there isn't much a tech can do and you'll need to buy a new drive

[dougdude]

more than likley...windows found her stock oem copy of xp to be ungenuine"" and put an ata security max lock on good ol grama! ....bill gates dos'e need more money.

[RicheemxX]

more than likley...windows found her stock oem copy of xp to be ungenuine"" and put an ata security max lock on good ol grama! ....bill gates dos'e need more money.

WTF are you talking about

ata security max lock get real

[JEROY]

one thing is for sure ..Better change the old Hard Disk . Even if you can restore the system it will keep failing .

[stroyal]

Just 2 things to add.
If you have a non boot floppy in the floppy drive, you will get that message. (just grasping)
The manufacturer of the drive will have a test program, free for download, on their web sight.


Edit
Oh, and if you do get it working, long enough to save your data, there is no need to waste money on an enclosure,(unless you want one)

You can just install the old, and new drive in the computer, and copy your data.

It always amazes me that people still don't backup, no offense, but it is a common problem.
With a simple backup, big data loss problems, just don't happen, saving hours of work, and swearing.

[chess1]

Thanks for all your tips and info, guys. It's really appreciated. I wanted to update what happened the week I posted my question. I went to the Microcenter store where I bought my mom a new HP laptop and external portable seagate hard drive. I told a Microcenter sales clerk what happened and he told me bluntly that if it went through a "disk boot failure" then all the data is deleted. He said I could try putting it into an external enclosure and try to recover the data but it's probably corrupted. I tried doing that with my own Windows 7 laptop but it doesn't work. I found out looking through Ixquick.com search engine results (I don't use google, bing, yahoo, and aol search engines) using the phrases "external hard drive" "windows 7 doesn't regonize" together that many older hard drives might not work with Windows 7. I read from various forums from other people's problems and experiences that if I wanted to use it as an external hard drive I would have to reformat it in device manager to get it to work in Windows 7. So that wasn't an option. I also went to Office Depot and I told a very knowledge sales clerk/+A certified technician about my plan of setting up the old corrupted internal hard drive as an external hard drive and he told me it doesn't work like that if it was an internal main hard drive. He suggested that I should try and set it up as a slave with a new internal hard drive and try to recover any data. However I never got around to it as I already bought my mom a new HP laptop and new portable external hard drive to back things up as mentioned before. And I'm very hesitant about taking the corrupted hard drive to an +A certified technician.

Just 2 things to add.

Edit
Oh, and if you do get it working, long enough to save your data, there is no need to waste money on an enclosure,(unless you want one)

You can just install the old, and new drive in the computer, and copy your data.

It always amazes me that people still don't backup, no offense, but it is a common problem.
With a simple backup, big data loss problems, just don't happen, saving hours of work, and swearing.

Yup, everything was constantly backed up in an old Acomdata 3.5" 160GB hard drive because of experiences with a previous incident with an older computer a long time ago and I kept all family photos in the sd disk. I don't reformat/reuse sd disks. However, the old Acomdata which was bought from a former CompUSA store I think back 2001 or 2002 would not work on my own Windows 7 laptop. It's not even recognized in Windows 7 probably because it's an old external hard drive. So I took the old Acomdata external hard drive to my uncle's old Windows XP AMD 3200 computer rig and was able to get her folder with taxes and other important data, and family photos and transferred it to my own portable hard drive which I then transferred it to her new laptop. I was hoping that the old desktop can be reusable because these things take up lot of space. From now on I'm buying laptops since they can easily be stored away and it doesn't take up a lot of space compared to desktops.